Top Beginning Band Practices – AIM Success – Audible Intelligence Music. There’re a few items that can be paid special attention to in order to produce the very best beginning band possible. The first thing that is of most importance is the teacher. The teacher needs to have planned out how they would like their classes to run. Note to teachers of the same. Each teacher needs to figure out what will work for them. Some teachers are very upbeat and spontaneous. Even though they’re spontaneously need to know what they’re doing. And other teachers are very methodical and need to follow a special pace. Even another methodical they still need to keep it interesting for the students. It is a very fine form of improvisation on the teachers part to be able to maintain a productive classroom. There is a fine line with with having it too fun and not accomplishing something or being too methodical and is not being enjoyable at all to the students. You have to find a combination of these that will be the most productive possible. Top Beginning Band Practices – AIM Success – Audible Intelligence Music The next thing that is needed is the students themselves. You’ll need to recruit for your classes. Some schools have required classes you do not need to recruit. Some schools have electives that some kids will sign up for. And some people will have to have it as an extracurricular activity. These people probably have the toughest time with recruiting for the ensembles. The next thing which is crucial is determining what materials you’ll use to teacher band. I’ve spent over 20 years teaching beginning bands. They have been successful in many ways and it excelled Beyond what I would’ve expected. The students have learned from many different techniques. We have put together a curriculum combining all of the things that a few teachers have been found to be extremely successful. This way every new teacher does not have to re-create the wheel. They can use what we have done and they can adapt it to their own teaching methods and they can use it to their damage where they don’t have to prepare all of the materials that we have prepared. Top Beginning Band Practices – AIM Success – Audible Intelligence Music This group of lessons that we put together we call it a full curriculum for band we also referred to as a beginning band method book this method book however could you expand over two students were quite advanced. Even though it starts at the beginning I have found even as a very advanced musician that is often good to go back to the beginning and review the foundation and make sure that you keep getting your foundation foundational skills stronger and stronger so that you can progress even further than you already work. This book puts together lesson plans for the teacher. Each unit has check off points. This the entire unit has to be finished before you can go to the next unit. This way you can make sure that you did not skip over any important material before you progressed. Some of them the students do on their own they have practice checks to make sure that they have worked on the playing skills portion of the unit. Top Beginning Band Practices – AIM Success – Audible Intelligence Music There’s advantages to students doing this portion on their own and there are advantages to doing it as a class. I like to have a check off sheet for each of my classes so that I know that we went through the entire unit as a class. I don’t always have the kids mark down these practice checks I like to have them do their own set of practice checks on the unit at home. I don’t let them always mark what we do during class. When you’re done with a unit the student should be able to count every rhythm in that unit. They should be able to read every note and that river in that unit. They should’ve completed all of their practice checks in that unit. They should’ve finished all of the theory pages. And every page should have a star at the top. When I check and unit I always put a start at the top of page so that I will know when I go back through to check again if there’s anything that is not completed. This beginning band method book is a huge help to band directors. It’s especially helpful for the experience band directors because many of them teach the same concepts but they don’t have the materials all in one location and where each individual student can be assessed as to which concepts they understand which concepts they do not understand. This method is also helpful for a beginning teacher. Because they would not even know to do all these concepts. Top Beginning Band Practices – AIM Success – Audible Intelligence Music They will however improve at teaching this message as they progress through their teaching career. Then alongside of this the teachers can choose their concert music and whatever performing music that they want to add to this. Sometimes it depending on how my classes are I will have students individually in a different unit they will be working individually on whatever unit they are on. We may get a new student to our school and they will start and you don’t one we’re some of their classmates maybe on unit nine or 10. This way everyone can be challenged at their own level. We will cover some of the concepts as a group during class and then the students will break away and practice their own with your theory skills and sometimes even there performance skills as well on their own. This band method book is the only book of its kind. The other books all have songs but they do not have a complete curriculum that progresses it 10 different units of difficulty. It also helps the students to feel like they have accomplished something and they are a lot more excited about reviewing things and perfecting them. The final areas of this book that are helpful is that they have a short historical portion about certain composers the students get to learn a few facts about the composers and then they get to learn a short excerpt of one of their compositions. Then the students get to compose their own piece demonstrating that they know how to use the proper music manuscript and put the right amount of beads in each measure. Top Beginning Band Practices – AIM Success – Audible Intelligence Music